24 Comments

“US and Russia complete biggest prisoner swap in post-Soviet history, freeing Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan”

As trump's campaign initiatives further crater…It seems Putin is quicker than the national media to understand when an asset is no longer an asset?"

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Good observation, and it's fair to say that even the Times might run an article headlined, "Why the prisoner swap with Russia spells bad news for tRump"...one lives in hope.

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Vance claimed the release came because of fear of a Trump presidency. Bless his little heart!

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Question remains, does he have one, or as with his owners is there only a gaping hole?

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That sating is my favorite polite Southern way of saying “what an a##hole”!😀🤪

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Why exactly is it hard to explain the toxicity of Trump? It seems to me that it's just the opposite. It's actually hard not to. But the media keep finding ways not to. I have to believe that is by design. They could make up Biden's toxicity or unfitness or whatever you want to call it from whole cloth. But they can't find ways to report that Trump is and has always been a deranged, narcissistic sociopath and a racist? The MSM have routinely normalized Trump's behavior and ignored or elided his worst tendencies. At the same time, they manage to deride and diminish Biden's best attributes and accomplishments. That's what takes a lot of effort and forethought. Describing Trump's cruelty, his racism, his hate and his unfitness for office is not a heavy lift.

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He loved to talk about Biden's loss of mental acuity, but today we learned that Biden negotiated the release of 2 Americans from Russian prisons. I think it's also a signal by Putin that he might not be in love with Trump anymore. Whatever it is, it was a huge victory for a man known for his skill in negotiations with adversaries. Kudos to Joe Biden, who is already showing that he was underestimated.

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Spot on, except here: "My view is that anytime Trump makes himself available for questioning by journalists, those journalists should take him up on it.

But they should also be ready. And that means ready to fact-check him in real time."

Agreed so far, but you failed to compliment the journalists on stage who DID fact-check and contradict him repeatedly, and even the crowd made him change the way he pronounced the Vice President's first name. They deserve to be held up as examples of what other interviewers have rarely done with the slippery orange eel.

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Comments section under the original WaPo "...Pivotal Point for Harris..." headline were absolutely scorching and sarcastic. I mean, thousands of readers went ballistic, and small wonder the digital version rushed out a rewrite. Which is how we the readers force the MSM to do justice to those maligned by naked racism, instead of the media pussyfooting around, or blaming the victim, ffs.

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Great point. My comments are somewhere on that thread 😎

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I read elsewhere that Trump appeared there only on the condition that he would not be fact checked. I shit you not. That's why he went batshit and called the woman interviewing him "rude" for pushing him to answer her questions.

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Aug 1·edited Aug 1

The NY Times was saying that the event started 90 minutes late, and that the last 45 minutes were a wrangle over live fact-checking. The orange liar then blamed the delay on their audio system supposedly not working.

There is no lie too small for him to tell, and no problem that is ever in even the smallest way his fault.

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Trump has blamed "audio systems" before, whenever he has said things he later regretted. This time it's not working.

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On MSNBC commentators said he started late because they demanded live fact-checking & he declined. Then he blamed the organizers for poor technical skills.

The reporters TRIED to correct hin but he ran right over them.

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What happens is that journalists are intimidated because he's a former president.

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The problem is obvious, that the mainstream press thinks only people of color care about racism and, as such, don't need to have it pointed out to them. This is more racist bullshit in a country that still denies its history of killing people of color and lording over them as being morally superior. Trump is a perfect example of a white man who thinks he can decide how people of color should think. Worse, his hubris in telling those Black women interviewing him that they were "rude" went unchallenged by the mainstream press. Jesus, we've still got a long way to go in America.

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The corporate media is desperate to keep Trump in the horse race. Yet every day his racism and dementia are making that task very difficult. Yesterday's dumpster fire was too big a deal for them to ignore, too big a deal to flog off as Trump being Trump, so they had to say something. And so they minimize it as much as possible. And, at the same time, they have ignored his promise to pardon the J6 terrorists, which is, frankly, a bigger deal than his racism.

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Considering that there are millions of non white people living in America, Trump's racism is a very, very big deal.

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"As I’ve argued before, when Trump says something bogus, you stop him right there. I’ve been arguing since at least 2017 that anyone with a chance to interview Trump owes it to the public to confront him with the facts he so routinely denies."

Easier said than done, I'm afraid. When any interviewer, especially a woman, tries to correct a Trump lie in real time, Trump simply overrides them with loud interruptions and interjections. Viewers hear nothing but a mishmash of noise. Like any pathological liar, Trump has had plenty of practice deflecting accusations of deception. And even when an individual fact check does reach the audience, Trump will immediately attack with ten more falsehoods, leaving the interviewer with no time to explain WHY Trump's statement is a lie. Interviewing Trump is like trying to block the stream from a firehose with an umbrella. He'll never change, because the only audience he's aiming at is his base of diehard bigots, who will delight in watching him "trigger" a star from the mass media, all of whom are, of course, enemies of the people.

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The news media buried the lede by focusing on what he said. The lede is that he lost his shit on the first question, got increasingly flustered and incoherent, and had to be hustled off the stage early by his handlers. If the guy can't keep it together when a report asks a tough question, how can we expect him to run the country? The headlines make it sound like he calmly spouted racist crap. He didn't. He lost it, and started lashing out with whatever was there in his walnut brain. The man is completely unfit for the office.

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By calling him out as the racist he is, you are taking away some of his power!!! Good job!!! Vote Blue 💙💙

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"falsely suggests" hmmm.... isn't the word "suggests" the most passive-voice description in political journalism? He SAID IT, he didn't "suggest" anything.

Oxford:

sug·gest

/sə(ɡ)ˈjest/

verb

put forward for consideration.

"I suggest that we wait a day or two"

Similar:

propose

put forward

submit

recommend

advocate

advise

propound

urge

encourage

counsel

move

table

cause one to think that (something) exists or is the case.

"finds of lead coffins suggested a cemetery north of the river"

Similar:

indicate

lead to the belief

give the impression

give the idea

argue

point to

demonstrate

show

evince

hint

insinuate

imply

intimate

drive at

get at

state or express indirectly.

"are you suggesting that I should ignore her?"

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Dan, you have it exactly right. But the style of those articles is typical of journalism just about everywhere now. So what happened to the idea that writing should "have punch"? Well, we can still put "punch" in our own work.

And what will writing by artificial intelligence be like? The very thought of that makes me a little nauseous . . .

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Without it we are lost!

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